Development of Social-Democratic Ideas in Slovakia after 1989

The origins of social-democratic ideas in Slovakia can be found in the period of existence of the Habsburg monarchy, where is created the first political party of the Slovaks, which is operating with these value orientations. During the first Czechoslovak republic, social democrats belong to important actors in the policy-making process, though progressively they hit the increasing positions of the Communist party what results a coup on February 1948 that brought (among other things) a limitation to act for other political subjects. Only in 1989 are created conditions for the re-development of social-democratic ideas. To a certain extent is though the period after November marked by dei-deologisation of the policy, which was significantly shown in left-oriented ideas. As a consequence, these subjects did not succeed to fulfil their electoral potential. The change came after the unification process that took place under the curatorship of the political party SMER-SD. The aim of this paper is to characterize the issue in the development of social-democratic ideas in Slovakia after 1989 until now focusing on the political party SMER-SD.